The Palestinian Center for Prisoner Advocacy welcomes the statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron during a meeting with a public gathering, describing them as an important shift in the international discourse on the issue of Palestinian prisoners.
President Macron’s call for the release of all Palestinian and Israeli hostages and for an end to the aggression represents long-awaited justice in international and European positions. We hope these statements will be translated into concrete actions. In this context, the Center calls on other European countries to follow the French President’s advanced stance.
The Palestinian Center for Prisoner Advocacy affirms that the Israeli occupation is holding no fewer than 10,000 Palestinian hostages, prisoners, and detainees alive, in addition to more than 700 bodies of Palestinians—among them martyrs who were prisoners—kept in morgue freezers or what is known as “cemeteries of numbers.”
The Center views these statements as a step in the right direction and hopes that they will be followed by genuine political pressure to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners, end unlawful detention practices, stop human rights violations, and put an end to enforced disappearances and torture, which have claimed the lives of nearly 80 Palestinian hostages, prisoners, and detainees over the past two years.
